History
The idea of the TGV was first proposed in the 1960s, after Japan had begun construction of the Shinkansen (also known as the bullet train) in 1959. At the time the French government favoured new technology, exploring the production of hovercraft and the Aérotrain air-cushion vehicle. Simultaneously, SNCF began researching high speed trains that would operate on conventional tracks. In 1976, the government agreed to fund the first line. By the mid-1990s, the trains were so popular that SNCF president Louis Gallois declared TGV "The train that saved French railways".
Read more about this topic: High-speed Rail In France
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“If you look at history you’ll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“The only history is a mere question of one’s struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)